Pasture-Raised Podcast

For the past decade, two families have settled on a rolling 120 acre property in Henry County, KY under the name “Valley Spirit Farm”. Together the the Fiechters and Monroes have partnered in the care of the land, and the building of a business that sustains their way of life. In this conversation we discuss their unique partnership, the ways they've integrated their pork and beef with mushrooms and vegetables, plus marketing, business structure, and much more.   Valley Spirit Farm Valley Spirit Farm Instagram.com/valleyspiritfarm Facebook.com/valleyspiritfarm   My links info@grocefamilyfarm.com Grocefamilyfarm.com Instagram.com/grocefamilyfarm Pasture-Raised Podcast (libsyn.com)  

Ginger shields of Pastured Life Farm joined me to discuss her extensive knowledge and experience in farm marketing.   Ginger's Links: pasturedlifefarm.com Pastured Life Farm (facebook.com) instagram.com/pasturedlifefarms APPPA.org My Links: grocefamilyfarm.com info@grocefamilyfarm instagram.com/grocefamilyfarm

When done thoughtfully, farms can provide a great context for raising kids; especially when education is seen as life-long, and as wide as the real world around us. Dave and Ginger rely on their children to run their successful farm business with them. And they rely on their farm to provide the context for learning about the world around them: how to work and learn, or at least to fan the flames of the curiosity we are all born with. This episode is part one of two from a great interview I did with Ginger. Look for Episode 22 to see our discussion on farm marketing. Ginger's Links: pasturedlifefarm.com (2) Pastured Life Farm | Facebook Pastured Life (@pasturedlifefarms) • Instagram photos and videos APPPA.org My Links: grocefamilyfarm.com info@grocefamilyfarm instagram.com/grocefamilyfarm

I talked to Joelle Wood about her path towards guiding her farm as she took on a lot in 2020, feeding her community and seizing on great opportunities to grow her farm; all while holding to her aspirational values.  https://www.theoldfashionedfarmstead.com/ The Old Fashioned Farmstead (@theoldfashionedfarmstead) • Instagram photos and videos My Links: info@grocefamilyfarm.com grocefamilyfarm.com instagram.com/grocefamilyfarm

Cliff Davis spent much of his adult life, and became known across the region as a permaculture educator, helping people learn how to apply ecological literacy and system thinking to their footprint on the land. But in this episode we talk about his new act: farming and breeding pigs, and selling food to his community in central Tennessee. This episode explores much of this transition, as well as going deep into Cliff's business, hog genetics, and the application of his principles to his livelihood on his particular piece of land. pigandleaf.com facebook.com/PigandLeafFarm farmer@pigandleaf.com I'm Luke Groce, a pasture-based farmer in southern Indiana. For more about me, see the following links: grocefamilyfarm.com info@grocefamilyfarm.com instagram.com/grocefamilyfarm facebook.com/grocefamilyfarm  

After Jesse sharing about their business and sales models on episode 17, Matthew joins the conversation to share more about the ins and outs of their operation; but especially hiring and managing employees, and navigating USDA inspected slaughter and processing with both poultry and mammals. They are doing a lot, and quite impressively so. See the links below to learn more about them. https://marblecitymeats.com/ https://marblecreekfarmstead.com/ https://www.facebook.com/marblecreekfarmstead The Pasture Raised Podcast is produced by Luke Groce of Groce Family Farm. To learn more about me, my farm, or to connect, see the links below: grocefamilyfarm.com info@grocefamilyfarm.com instagram.com/grocefamilyfarm facebook.com/grocefamilyfarm

I had the pleasure of speaking with Jesie and Matthew Lawrence about the many sides of their diverse business, including farming, marketing, selling, and processing on a growing farm. In this episode Jesie helped me wrap my brain around all they do, their infrastructure, staff, and the ways they get their products to their customers. Check them out at the links below! marblecreekfarmstead.com marblecitymeats.com

I asked some of our past guests to share their answers to seven questions, so that we could hear some unique perspectives on how different farms and farmers across the country are faring during the wild year that is 2020. Joe Koopsen, Jordan Green, and Ben Grimes all shared their answers to the following questions: 1. What kind of changes came in March within each of your market streams? (Percentages or other way of describing it are fine) 2. When was the peak of pandemic buying for your farm business? Where are you now in relationship to the peak and the pre-pandemic status quo? 3. What strategies have you been using to hold onto your new customers? 4. What have you done to adapt in order to meet the demand in production, distribution and marketing? 5. What are your guesses for what the future might look like? 6. How are you, your family doing, adapting? 7. Anything else you want to add? Thanks again for everyone participating. Good luck out there with any and all future fluctuations! 

Curtis Brown is back for part two of our interview, where we talk all about how he has, and will continue to, get his meat into his customers' hands. We talk CSA logistics, marketing ideas, and streamlining through a cooperative distribution network.  Curtis and Ashley's Links: foodethosfarm.com instagram.com/foodethosfarm facebook.com/foodethosfarm For more about me: grocefamilyfarm.com instagram.com/grocefamilyfarm facebook.com/grocefamilyfarm

Curtis and Ashley started out, like me, raising vegetables on a small plot about a decade ago. Now they are regenerating a large section of prairie, selling Meat CSA's, and taking names. In this first episode of a two-part series, Curtis and I discuss their farm, its history and his history on it: as well as his pig operation and marketing strategy. Stay tuned for episode 15, where we go deeper into all this and more!

An episode recoded in April of 2020 on how Charlie and his wife Kerissa are adapting and growing into the Covid 19 pandemic. Thanks to Charlie for this wide-ranging discussion touching on all aspects of his farm and business.    https://coveyrisefarmsohio.com/

All about how Covid 19 has affected Ramble Creek Farm since we recorded Josh's episode.

Many first generation farmers start on family land, or from scratch in their home region, making a go of it nearby to, and selling into their own community. Well Josh started Ramble Creek Farm by moving across the country, purchasing an existing farm with infrastructure and market access, and built his business quickly from there. We get into a diverse array of details on how he's solved problems in production and marketing in his unique context.   https://ramblecreekfarm.com/ facebook.com/ramblecreekfarm/ www.instagram.com/ramblecreekfarm/ My Links: Grocefamilyfarm.com Instagram.com/grocefamilyfarm facebook.com/grocefamilyfarm  

Mark Brady and I discuss the ins and outs of what our farms are doing to cope and thrive in these trying times, when it seems like everything is changing. The final answers to all the problems aren't here. But real-time problem solving and thinking is! Timberfeast.com Find me here: Grocefamilyfarm.com info@grocefamilyfarm.com

3/23/20: A journal of what happened in the past two weeks: How our farm is adapting, capitalizing on opportunity, feeding our community, and looking towards the future to try to make wise choices about how to make sure we can keep on farming and meeting the needs of our community now and into the future.

Joe Koopsen has been farming since the age of 15 in Southern Michigan. His egg and broiler business have taken off in the decade since -and now he supports a young family through the production of broilers, eggs, brooded broiler chicks, and turkeys.  In this episode we discuss his path into the wholesale markets, his brooder and broiler setup, his unique marketing relationships, and a little about ducks and turkeys too. Its a good one. I hope you enjoy!

Going way off topic with Peter Allen! 

Peter, with his wife, Maureen, and two children live in a fairly remote section of the Kikapoo valley in Wisconsin. Peter's entrance into farming, as you'll hear, came from -of all places, academics. I much appreciate how Peter was able to enter an environment like that, utilize it to grow in his understanding of the world around him, and then apply enough critical thinking to find a lifeway that diverged from any pre-determined course, but fit within his ethics and his new understanding of the world around him.     Critical thinking and clear vision leading to bold action, with that much on the line, is rare. But as you'll see, the bravery and competence are paying off, as they build a farm and a life on it in a way that is maximizing soil and biomass accumulation, ecosystem function, biodiversity, and human flourishing.   Peter is someone I've learned a lot from, and who's teachings and descriptions have helped me gain an understanding of the landscape around me that I interact with daily. I'll give you one example that didn't even come into the discussion recorded here: Its a simple concept, and for many its a hard pill to swallow: At some point in the past, Peter has described efficiency and resilience as inversely correlative: Any redundancy would be less efficient than having a simple way of achieving a goal, but more resilient.    This of course can explain phenomenon we see from diversity on the landscape, to our marketing portfolio. It is more efficient to raise one thing on a land base, at least in terms of time, equipment and management. But it is more resilient to promote diversity in the landscape -both for the humans and the other players in the ecosystem. Or if you think about having one six figure account, or one hundred four-figure accounts, its more resilient, but less efficient to move your products to 100 customers, who almost definitely won't all leave you at the same time.  In a sense, efficiency can be a trap -something you need to achieve a certain level of in order to create a marketable product. But also something that can tempt you to seek out greater and greater efficiencies -until you've got tens of thousands of animals in barns.  As you explore it further, you realize that the exceptions to the rule aren't as many as you would have hoped. This isn't hard to understand. But this is among the many ideas that Peter has explained to me that help me to build a framework around what I'm doing and try to conceptualize the most resilient lifestyle, while being adequately efficient to make a living. That's just a piece of thinking that Peter has given me, but one we don't even touch on in this podcast. Up ahead we talk all about the ecological basis for Peter's farm and farm name, what he's producing, how he's producing it, and how he and Maureen are building a loyal customer base despite the challenges of being in a remote section of the upper mid-west.  We go deep into some of his constraints with cold winters, hay buying, shipping meat, and his CSA program, which was the inspiration behind my own CSA program that has become the centerpiece of our farm's retail presence.   Peter and Maureen: Mastodonvalleyfarm.com Mastodonvalleymedicinals.com Instagram.com/mastodonvalleyfarm   Me: info@grocefamilyfarm.com grocefamilyfarm.com Instagram.com/grocefamilyfarm

I had a fantastic conversation with Ben Grimes of Dawnbreaker Farms and Dependable Poultry Processors in Hurdle Mills, NC that I'm eager to share with you. Ben is a smart farmer who knows and understands his farm, his processing business, and his numbers, and is thoughtful and wise about how to use them to pursue his goals.  If you're someone who processes poultry, or has poultry processed by someone else, stay tuned. If you're someone who raises and sells ducks, or is interested in raising and selling ducks, stay tuned. If you're someone who would like to see farmers market sales go way up, stay tuned. And if you're someone who likes to see how people are solving problems on their farms, in their context, with creative solutions that you can learn from, then, as always stay tuned! A couple of notes: I plan to continue to release episodes at the beginning of the week each week for a while. I hope to be dependable in that. second. This is my last "recorded in a Jetta" episode that i have in the kitty. I hope its not too distracting. And I hope that you'll enjoy better sound quality in the future. And three: my email is info@grocefamilyfarm.com if you'd like to give me any feedback. I'd love to hear from you!    Ben's course can be purchased through our friends at grassfed life, grassfedlife.co.    While I'm mentioning them: A note about Darby and Diego and grassfed life: Those guys have provided myself and many others I know, and many of you listening a lot of value through their podcast and courses and mentorship, and they have in many ways inspired and helped me to create this podcast. They have also partnered with Ben and I at separate times to create education for farmers. So I just want to say for myself, that I appreciate that they have, in many ways, shared their platforms and audiences in order to help us out and partner with us when they didn't have to.    You can find out more about Ben at Dawnbreakerfarms.com, or Dawnbreaker Farms on all the Social media. Again, thanks to Ben. He's become a good friend, and someone who's example I look to when trying to figure out how to make my farm better. It takes a lot of pieces to make a farm business viable. And smart friends and examples and camarades are an important one.   I'm Luke: Grocefamilyfarm.com, info@grocefamilyfarm.com

Many of us doing pasture-based agriculture in the United States are doing it because we love our craft. But at the core, ideally we also have goals for our lives and land that match up with the life, lifestyle, and realities of running a pasture-based agricultural enterprise. And to run a truly sustainable farm, we are going to have to work in alignment with our goals in a long-term sustainable way. My goals are probably not that different from many of the people listening to this podcast: To produce nutrient-dense food for our community: yes. But more to the core of my passions, it is to live and work alongside my family as we enjoy the many good things that come from this land together: connection to nature, the ability to learn to work and to live life well. Pasture-based farming provides us a chance to raise our most important crop: future adult humans -in a way that we think enables a great childhood that we hope can, in turn, lead to a great life.    Today's guest is someone who's farm produces many of the things mine does -even with similar growing methods and at a similar scale, all on pasture. But, while he has young children like me -and probably can resonate with much of what I just said- he has a set of goals, and a vision for his farm that both challenge and excite me to look beyond the boundaries of my own nuclear family and the boundaries of our farm:   Nick Stollberg of New Roots Haiti is a farmer, yes. But he's a social entrepreneur and missionary working to bring about real change in his community in Northern Haiti through gainful employment in a regenerative profitable enterprise, providing nutrient-dense food and enabling soil building where land has been mined of nutrients by centuries of sugar cane planting, as well as a market for small plot farmers to get a fair price for their crops. Nick, with his wife Nikki and their team are doing all of this in Northern Haiti as they build a supply chain that enriches the stakeholders in their community, upstream down and sideways to their neighbors.   I hope you'll enjoy this conversation with Nick Stollberg of New Roots Haiti!   Well there it is. I want to thank Nick again for coming on the podcast. He's a wonderful fellow. Last month I got to meet him and his farm production manager, Jovenel Kenold. They are doing really cool things in just three years of production, and I hope you'll check them out: Newrootshaiti.org, or on facebook: New Roots Haiti.    And as I said in the interview: I personally can't endorse a project highly enough, when they are taking donated dollars and using it to build a long-term sustainable socially enriching enterprise that blesses so many in the community with the possibility of employment and a better life.   And thanks for tuning in! I'd love to hear any feedback you've got along the way. The theory behind this podcast is that I'm probably not the only one interested in hearing the kind of farmers I want to talk to, answering the kinds of questions I want to ask of them. But whatever ideas for making it better that pop into my brain don't have to be the only ideas. So as I'm working to continue to make this podcast better and better, I would love to hear any suggestions you might have along the way.   

In this episode Ben Grimes and I break down the APPPA 2020 conference in Jacksonville held in January.  Learn more about APPPA here: apppa.org Learn more about Ben here: Instagram.com/dawnbreakerfarms dawnbreakerfarms.com More from Ben, and about Ben and his farm in the future. If you want to see what my "day range" poultry system looked like a couple seasons back, here's a video Diego Footer produced at my farm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lGTQx5yExM find me at grocefamilyfarm.com, Instagram.com/grocefamilyfarm. Don't forget to subscribe! We are now live in Google Podcasts.

Notes for intro:  Pasture-Raised Podcast, Episode 3! Thanks for tuning in again. I hope you enjoyed our first interview last week with Dave Shields. I appreciate all of the kind feedback I've received on it, and want to welcome you to subscribe and leave a review and let other folks know about it if you've found it to be valuable.   Before we get into today's episode, let me just talk a little about what you might be able to expect with this podcast going forward: My plan is to release an episode towards the beginning of the week, each week, through the remainder of the winter. As we push into spring, that frequency will likely go to every other week or so. As you've gathered I'll be doing mostly interview style shows with farmers about the farm businesses folks are running. But I do have a few discussions coming up that will be a little more topically focused as well.   This week we've got a great interview for you with Jordan Green of J and L Green Farm, and the Farm Builder YouTube channel. With his wife, Laura, Jordan raises and sells weaned pigs, pork, beef, chicken, and turkey in Edinburgh, Virginia. Jordan is a very smart fellow. as you'll see in a minute. He's applying radically independent critical thinking and finding opportunities and exploiting them at every turn while understanding and managing his risk very well. There is probably no evidence of this better than the fact that the farm business he's built is unique and robust.    One big thing that struck me is how Jordan is so capable of taking his high-level thinking, experience, and well-earned perspective, and presenting it at a conceptual level, in order to, in a sense, further value-add his own knowledge and help the rest of us see more clearly how we can apply these business and farming principles in our own context. I suppose experience and knowledge with the ability to communicate it effectively and applicably, in a motivating way, is the essence of what a good teacher is. And that's exactly what you have here. For those of us who got into farming with more idealism than business principles swirling around in our brains, teachers like this offer a necessary counter-balance, and are examples in the ways we will need to think and farm if we are going to be in this for the long haul.    Jordan's Links: https://www.instagram.com/farmbuilder_1/ https://www.jlgreenfarm.com/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC11kHJNUV88Qp-Sz06N1o1A   My Links: Grocefamilyfarm.com Instagram.com/grocefamilyfarm facebook.com/grocefamilyfarm

Dave Shields of Pastured Life Farm joined me for a wonderful discussion of why and how he farms on pasture with his family in rural North Florida. We talked about the passions that drive him and the nitty gritty details of each of his enterprises. Much thanks to Dave, and to his whole family for sharing on this episode, and all the ways they do throughout the pasture-based small farming community! Learn more about Pastured Life Farm here: https://www.pasturedlife.com/ https://www.instagram.com/pasturedlifefarms/ https://www.facebook.com/pasturedlife/ Many of Dave's inventions have been shared through the APPPA community. Check them out here: APPPA.org In particular, see one of them through this link: https://apppa.org/resources/Documents/building%20a%20multi%20purpose%20pasture%20shelter.pdf

    Hey Everybody! And welcome to the Pasture-Raised Podcast. My name is Luke Groce. Together with my wife, Katherine, and our four children I run Groce Family Farm in Southern Indiana. I really want to thank you for listening to this, our first episode. If you're at all into pasture-based farming, I hope you'll get some value out of what we're trying to accomplish here.   A little about me: I met my wife in 2007. Once I convinced her to Marry me, we started dreaming about having a farm one day. After a year of working on someone else's farm, we started raising vegetables on our own in 2010. After a few years of veg farming, we were finding that, for us and with the way we were doing it,  it was difficult to make an income and have time to spend with our young family. We also started to learn about the possibilities with pasture and perennial systems in regenerative agriculture. So in 2014 we began raising pigs in the woods, and in 2015 we purchased and moved to a new farm. Once we arrived here, we began adding in more and more animals and eliminating pretty much all of the crops. Now we are in our sixth year of raising animals on pasture. The enterprises on our farm, in order of economic importance, are chickens, pigs, ducks, cattle, turkeys and sheep. If you don't know me, or know much about me, I'm sure you'll have chance to hear more from me in future episodes.   I've been a big consumer of many podcasts over the years, related to whatever interests I have: But most especially farming. I've been thinking about producing a podcast like this for a long time, mostly because it really is the podcast I've always wanted to listen to. Many of my friends and colleagues in this space have produced podcasts that had elements of what I was looking for. But what you'll see here is my attempt at providing just what I always was looking for more of: conversations with good, innovative, and interesting pasture-based farmers out there; to see what is working, what is not working, and how we can all build our farms and farm businesses. My hope is to talk to people who are working on solving the real problems many of us might come across daily on our farms and in the marketplace. Throughout each episode, I hope you'll hear novel and interesting answers to this question: How are different folks with different skills and perspectives in different contexts building farms that can sustain our families, our land, our communities and ecosystems? If you're into that sort of stuff, have a listen!   If that's the mission statement, so to speak, of this podcast, then this sort of my shopping list: Here are a few of the markers I hope are present in each of my conversations:   Regenerative farming Solutions: How are we producing food while positively impacting our ecosystems: What are the ways that, through our impacts on the land, we are improving markers of biodiversity, wildlife habitat, and cleaner water, air, and improved soils. Pasture-Based agriculture: The farms I hope to highlight are pasture-based farms. We are pastoralists, and our craft is a big part of what I want to dive into. I want to talk to folks who are doing good work in this field about this craft. Sometimes it may look like nerding out or talking shop. But I want to go deep into the particulars with those who are innovating and applying their creativity to the craft of regenerative grassland management, rotational grazing, and ecosystem solutions. Profitable Farms: The solutions we pursue on the land can only be long-term solutions if we can obtain and manage a yield adequate to provide for a family, or multiple families. We will be talking about how we can make our interactions with the land economically sustainable. My hope is that these conversations will touch on all manner of aspects of how we can do that: running efficient operations with sound business principles, understanding necessary metrics and how we can manage essential resources of time, labor, capital, energy, etc better. Sustainable farms are profitable farms and profitable farms are real businesses and running real businesses is a skill and requires some thought. I used to think that spreadsheets and a system for organizing invoices was boring, until I realized it was the thing I could work on to make my farm succeed. Then it became fascinating to me! Featuring farms that communicate and market well: A piece of economic sustainability is finding those who are looking for what we have to offer, and then communicating with them well. I'll hope to talk to farmers about how we can share our stories, but also how we can make sure we're communicating in a way that helps people see how we can bring solutions to bear in our customers lives. I hope to chat with folks who are thinking about their customers' experiences from first contact through to the eating experience and beyond. Farmers who are figuring out how to balance life on the land with raising a family. I won't exclusively talk to people who have young families, such as mine. But I do want to hear how people are keeping themselves, their relationships and the people around them as healthy as possible while they do the hard work of running a farm business. If it hasn't become apparent yet, this podcast -while not about my life per se- is about all the things I spend my life thinking about, doing, and being invested in. That happens to be the kind of things that I want to have discussions about. All of the things discussed above are, in my case, done so that I can enjoy life on the land with my family, living a well-balanced and considered life. So I plan to talk to people who I think are doing an exemplary job of raising a family in an agrarian context about just that. Some conversations may not touch on this topic. And others may be entirely focused on it. But in the end, this is the topic that underlies every other one for me: because it is the end goal, for me, of all we do here.  Solving the issues that come alongside rural life, and navigating the new rural economy: I suspect that I'll have chances to talk to first generation farmers and seventh generation farmers. But either way, I'll be talking to people who work in pastures. And pastures are usually in rural areas. In some places, rural areas have seen issues related to urban sprawl and dwindling opportunities for land access. But also in other places, declining populations, brain drain, vanquished economies, and real social and community decline are a set of local issues to contend with. I suspect we will get into these topics some: including the nature of those issues. But also solutions, and how regenerative agriculture fits into rural economies now, and into the future.    So that's it. That's the vision for this thing. It's my dream podcast. So each episode will feature those kinds of conversations with those kinds of farmers. If you're into that, feel free to subscribe and listen along.   If you want to see what I have going on on my farm, feel free to check us out on facebook or instagram: at Groce (G R O C E) Family Farm. Our website is grocefamilyfarm.com